Page 47 of Justice

We got in Aubrey’s car and she locked the doors before she even put her seatbelt on.

“Did he see you?” I asked.

She didn’t answer fast enough.

“Aubrey. Did he see you?”

“No.” She pulled out onto the road. “I don’t think so.”

I sat back against that seat and closed my eyes, because I don’t think so is not no. I don’t think so is a maybe. Aubrey and Roman had been in the same rooms for years. Cookouts. My baby shower. That awful Christmas party where he’d held my waist all night and everyone said what a good husband. If that man’s eyes had passed over Aubrey Bennett’s face in that casino, he knew exactly who he was looking at.

“What is he doing up here?” My voice cracked down the middle. “Aubrey, what is that man doing eight hundred miles from Atlanta, in a casino, in DC?”

“I don’t know.”

“He doesn’t come up here. He has no reason to be up here. That’s the point. That’s the entire reason I picked this place. That’s the entire reason I’ve been up here scrubbing floors and wiping noses.” I had to stop and breathe. “That’s why I’m here at all.”

“I know, baby.”

“Five years.” I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, careful of the makeup I’d spent an hour on like a fool, like a woman who thought she got to have a night. “Five years I’ve been so careful. I don’t have social media. I don’t use my name. I don’t even let people take my picture at church.”

Aubrey was quiet a second. Then, low: “He was with her.”

I laughed. It came out wrong, jagged and mean.

“Of course he was with her. That’s his wife now, Aubrey. That’s what wives do, they go to parties on their husband’s arm.”

“Skye.” She glanced over. “I just can’t believe she really went through with it.”

“Don’t.” I shook my head hard. “Don’t do that. Don’t waste your breath being shocked. She got what she wanted. She wanted my house, my husband, my life, and she got every bit of it.” I looked out at the dark highway. “And she can have it. All of it. Because it is just a matter of time. Whatever he did to me, he’ll do to her. Maybe he already has. She’s just still in the part where she thinks she’s different.”

Aubrey didn’t argue with me. There wasn’t anything to argue with.

“I hope he’s visiting,” I said. “Please, God, let that man be visiting. Let it be a bachelor party or a basketball game or a funeral, I don’t care. I just need him to not have moved here.” My hands would not stop shaking in my lap. “I swear on everything, Aubrey. If he has moved anywhere near the DC area, I have to go. Again.”

My phone lit up on my knee when we were twenty minutes out.

It was Justice.

I stared at his name so long the screen went dark. Then it lit up again. I let it ring twice more before I answered.

“Hey.”

“Where’d you go?” No anger in it. Just that low careful voice of his, worried underneath. “I came back and your table was empty. I’ve been walking this whole floor.”

“I’m so sorry.” I closed my eyes. “Aubrey had a family emergency. We had to leave right that second. I didn’t want to pull you out of your own party to say goodbye.”

“Is everybody alright?”

“They will be. It’s handled. It just moved really fast.”

“I could’ve driven you home, Skye.” His voice pulled at me. “You didn’t have to run out of there like that. All you had to do was find me.”

“You had two hundred people in that room and half of them wanted something from you.” I tried to make it light. “Tonight was a work night for you. You would not have had time to sit and keep me company.”

“I always have time for you.”

Four words. In that voice. In the dark of my best friend’s car with my body still shaking.